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Pat Answers

Following the resignation yesterday of the Minister for Communications Denis Naughten focus has turned on junior minister Pat Breen.

Mr Breen, Minister of State for Trade, Employment, Business, EU Digital Single Market and Data Protection, was mentioned in the Dail yesterday as having organised a dinner attended by Mr Naughten at broadband bidder David McCourt’s home in 2014.

On RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland this morning, Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection Regina Doherty defended her colleague:

Ms Doherty said:

Pat Breen does not have any responsibility for the National Broadband Plan. He does not sit at Cabinet, so therefore collectively will not be responsible for making a decision who gets awarded a contract.

[He] is a minister in the Department of Business. It’s his job to meet businesses and potential investors in Ireland, which is what he does on a weekly basis….

By all accounts he’s become friends with this gentleman because they live up the road from each other…

Firstly – I wasn’t commenting specifically on the Pat Breen story – I was replying to your comment.
Secondly, you are now changing the goal-posts from “making friends or doing your job” to “making friends with people you are making deals with”, but I’ll answer that.

This is trickier. I have, on one occasion, declared a conflict of interest at work because of a friendship with an external party. I was open to my colleagues (and my friend) about the conflict – and they were able to take that friendship into account.
In the end, the deal didn’t happen (because of various other reasons) and afterwards the friendship survived.

Talking specifically about Pat Breen: according to the article above – he isn’t “making deals” – so your point is moot.

PAt Breen lives in Kildare. David McCourt lives in New York
Naughten said that the Cabinet has no hand in awarding this contract, Doherty says that they do.
Ministers of State do attend Cabinet meetings, Pat Breen says they don’t